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A Novel
by Margie Sarsfield
Book Reviewed by:A young woman's seasonal job working a sugar beet harvest takes a surreal turn in this surprising and vivid debut.
Elise and her boyfriend, Tom, set off for Minnesota, hoping the paycheck from the sugar beet harvest will cover the rent on their Brooklyn apartment. Amidst the grueling work and familiar anxieties about her finances, Elise starts noticing strange things: threatening phone calls, a mysterious rash, and snatches of an ominous voice coming from the beet pile.
When Tom and other coworkers begin to vanish, Elise is left alone to confront the weight of her past, the horrors of her uncertain future, and the menacing but enticing siren song of the beets. Biting, eerie, and confidently told, Beta Vulgaris harnesses a distinct voice and audacious premise to undermine straightforward narratives of class, trauma, consumption, and redemption.
Ultimately, the disappearances can't be the focus, since Elise's deterioration is the point here. Tom has left her stranded on this beet farm, starving, working all night with harvesting machines, with an overdrawn bank account and a mysterious rash-turned-bruise. I admire the author's attention to detail and how adeptly she varies her prose to show Elise's decline. I didn't close the book with a sense of resolution or satisfaction. Instead, I was sure I felt soil and bugs on me. (Thankfully all symptoms were psychogenic.) I felt frenzied as well, equal parts because I wanted to help Elise and because the author had written her decline so well. Truth be told, I don't mind a book doing these things to me because it shows the visceral power of the writing...continued
Full Review
(711 words)
(Reviewed by Erin Lyndal Martin).
In Beta Vulgaris — titled after the scientific name for sugar beets — workers come to Minnesota from across the country to work long shifts on big machines called pilers to harvest the crop. Is that what you picture when you hear the term "sugar beets"? Me neither — I always imagined deep red or borscht, but as it might appear in Candyland, and I assumed you plucked it from the ground like an earthen lollipop.
Alas, the sugar beet comes in the more humble form of a brown root vegetable that pretty much looks like a bigger carrot. All beets belong to beta vulgaris — which just means "common" or "ordinary." (Sorry.) They're usually around a foot long and weigh 2-5 lbs. Looking at photos of the drab, starchy inside,...
If you liked Beta Vulgaris, try these:
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by Yasmin Zaher
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A bold and unabashed novel about a young Palestinian woman's unraveling as she teaches at a New York City middle school, gets caught up in a scheme reselling Birkin bags, and strives to gain control over her body and mind
Danya Kukafka, author of Notes on an Execution
Uncanny and electric and quietly harrowing... . Margie Sarsfield dazzles us and challenges us, delivering a novel so vivid and memorable, I'll be thinking of beet pilers for years to come.
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